Pizza! Pizza! Papier-mache Pizza!!

My DragonWing Arts students are in the midst of making all sorts of delicious creations with various types of papier-mache.  There's the pizza slices pictured here, plus donuts, slices of cake and pie, and ice cream sundaes!  The pizza slices were the easiest to make and therefore are the first to be done, so I thought I'd share them with you today.  In the coming couple of weeks, we will be painting the cakes, donuts, and ice cream, and I'll be sharing them here too. 

I started by cutting out a couple of large circles from some chipboard, but any cardboard would be fine.  I cut them into slices, and each student made one slice of pizza.  I'm thinking, for our end-of-session art show, that I'll either find a large pizza box that will fit all 8 slices (I have 8 students currently), or a bunch of small ones, to display the pizza. 

The kids started by building an edge of crust on the back of their slice, with a rolled up and crumpled piece of tin foil that was taped on to the cardboard.  Then, some thickness was added to their slices, with a layer of Celluclay.  It was my first time using Celluclay, but I did not care particularly for it, especially for the poofs of dust when I mixed it up with water.  Yuck!  Next time, if I want some textured papier-mache, I'll go back to simply using an old favorite, a mix of shredded paper and Art Paste.  Its easy to make, dries rock hard, and isn't dusty!  And costs WAY less than Celluclay, which we also used on our cake slices, that I will blog about when complete.  I got these wonderful foil trays at 3 for $1 at the dollar store, and each student stored all their papier-mache pieces on their tray. 

I didn't particularly care for the texture of the dry Celluclay, so we dipped pieces of toilet paper into mixed Art Paste and put a layer of it on top of the Celluclay.  It very much mimicked the texture of gooey stretchy cheese. 

When the papier-mache was totally dry, it was time to make toppings and paint.  Toppings of pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, olives, pineapple, bacon, etc were all cut out of felt, and stuck into the wet paint as we painted, so that 'sauce' and 'cheese' sometimes got on top of the toppings.  We use acrylic paints on papier-mache for a nice permanent finish.  A variety of yellows, browns, oranges, reds, and light tans were pre-mixed and the kids then used whichever colors they wanted, and mixed them as desired, too, so some cheese and/or crusts looked a little more 'well done' than others!

The boy who made this slice insisted he wanted no toppings, because that's the way he likes to eat his pizza, and he purposely 'burned' his crust!

Below, a pizza slice is topped with pineapples, olives, mushrooms, red and green peppers, and some fresh mozzarella.  And another well-done crust!

Below, a very saucy pepperoni pizza!

The boy who made this pizza below was being pretty goofy.  He wanted to put liver on his pizza, but in the end, I think he made mushrooms instead, and added sauce and cheese to his crust.

The kids were enjoying 'eating' their pizza slices!

I'm afraid, with all my demonstrating, my sample slice (below) looks like its been re-heated in the toaster oven one too many times.  It's cheese looks rather dried out!

Below, some of the finished slices.  Now they will be set aside until we properly display them in our 'art show' during the final class of the 8-week session.  All-in-all, it's an easy and fun project, and if you are scared of papier-mache, a project like this is an easy way to get your feet wet!

Welcome to the Museum of Bad Art!

Yes, it's a real thing! The Museum of Bad Art is available for viewing in three galleries in/near Boston.   They are located at:

• The Somerville Theater in Davis Square
• The Brookline Interactive Group
• The New England Wildlife Center

This past weekend, my husband and I visited our son who lives in Somerville, and we noted that one of the galleries was located there. (Somerville - where Tufts University is located - is basically one of the communities that ring Boston, as is Brookline, where another of the galleries is located.  These communities feel like a part of Boston!) 

The gallery we visited is in the basement of the Somerville Theater (in walking distance from my son's home!) and is open to ticketed movie goers whenever the theater is open.  We were at the theater to see the movie Lion (I highly recommend it), and came early so that we could visit the museum for our first time.   Here's a bit about the museum and it's philosophy, which is all very much in tongue-in-cheek fun.  And by the way, if you stick with this post till the end, you'll see what I thought was the craziest piece on display in the museum!

The museum has over 600 pieces, but only about 20-40 are on view at each location at any given time, so presumably, you could return several times to see different parts of the collection. On display when we were there were "Dopplehangers" - Selected works from the POOR-TRAITS Collection that resemble, intentionally or not, famous people.  For example, below we have "Pablo Presley"

Please note, the quality of the photos in this post are as bad as the artwork.  It's a basement, the lighting is awful, and the space made it hard to photograph many of paintings straight-on.  And there was a rolling ladder thingy in front of one of the paintings.  Anyhow, here's what the gallery actually looks like:

Yup, like I said, it's a basement.  That's my husband, my son, and his girlfriend, above.  They are not sitting there because they are bored waiting for me; they are making dinner reservations for us, for after the movie!  Here's some pics from the collection.  Reading the tongue-in-cheek descriptions can be half the fun,  so I am including them here with the pics of some of the artwork.  

 Of course, there were bound to be paintings of Michael Jackson in a collection of bad portrait paintings (poor-traits).  [Above and below]  In the painting below, the hand is pretty hysterical, and then there's that squared-off chin...

And presidents.  Lots of presidents!  Here are a few of them.  Below, it looks like Bill Clinton has tiny hands, and perhaps has been painting some brown furniture, or burned his face on the grill while cooking burgers?

 What's so 'bad' about this portrait of President Obama below?  It's not the image of him, but the strange collection of repeating faces that surround him,including Denzel Washington and Morgan  Freeman. 

 And then there's this, below....  EEK!!

 And more singers and actors and such, and even an iconic president's wife...

These are pretty funny! 

And this:

And for the Grand Finale, here it is, the 'Torso Phone'!

 I hope you've enjoyed this little tour; It was hard to narrow down what to share with you!  Anyhow, I'll close with a closeup of a rather awkward hand.  Meanwhile,  If you are ever in Boston, instead of visiting the MFA (Museum of Fine Art), how about visiting the Museum of Bad Art instead!